Trailer for Fast Food Nation, based on
Trailer for Fast Food Nation, based on the book by Eric Schlosser.
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kottke.org posts about books
Playboy lists the 25 sexiest novels ever written.
Playboy lists the 25 sexiest novels ever written. I’ve read only 2 of the 25: Lolita and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Probably a little NSFW.
When asked whether or not the Da
When asked whether or not the Da Vinci Code movie should have a “this is fiction” disclaimer on it, Ian McKellen (who stars in the movie) replied, “I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction”. Zing! (via cyn-c)
Lee Siegel has a Malcolm Gladwell problem
Lee Siegel has a Malcolm Gladwell problem and, he argues, so do the rest of us. From a commenter (who gets his Dubner mixed up with his Levitt): “Gladwell is destroying literature as we know it”. (via 3qd)
Top science book prize goes to David
Top science book prize goes to David Bodanis’s Electric Universe, a book about electricity. An odd choice…I read the book and it was good but not great.
Did Vladimir Nabokov deliberately take the idea
Did Vladimir Nabokov deliberately take the idea for Lolita from a 1916 short story of the same name or did he suffer from cryptomnesia? Cryptomnesia is when you consciously forget previously learned information but subconsciously remember it. (via george, who says “It’s certainly a weird concept, that an idea can have a quantum state of being both remembered and new, and one that I think deserves more attention.”)
What Is the best work of American
What Is the best work of American fiction of the last 25 years? Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In a companion piece, A.O. Scott writes: “I was surprised at how few of the highly praised, boldly ambitious books by younger writers - by which I mean writers under 50 - were mentioned. One vote each for ‘The Corrections’ and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,’ none for ‘Infinite Jest’ or ‘The Fortress of Solitude,’ a single vote for Richard Powers, none for William T. Vollmann, and so on.” (via, sps)
John Gruber has more information on what’s
John Gruber has more information on what’s going on with Aperture at Apple. Bottom line: by throwing too many engineers at the problem, they made a late project later (see The Mythical Man Month, one of my favorite business books), and after it shipped, all those extra engineers were redispersed within the company and the managers responsible for the debacle got the boot. Good stuff.
Richard Dawkins has a new book coming
Richard Dawkins has a new book coming out in October called The God Delusion. For some reason, I don’t see this being a big seller in the US.
The Broom of the System
Following a long tradition on this site, I’m going to make a prediction based on very little evidence: David Foster Wallace will never write another novel. My feeling after reading The Broom of the System is that it’s basically a rough draft of the novelized “version” of his “life” that eventually became the lovingly polished Infinite Jest. (That’s right, two is a trend!) Or if he does, it’ll be 20 years from now, when enough time has passed for him to reflect on his experiences in long-format fiction as a writer, husband, teacher, famous personage, and (if he ever has kids) father.
As for Broom itself, I haven’t read enough philosophy for a proper review. The best I can do is compare it to Infinite Jest. If you want to read IJ but just can’t handle its 1000+ pages and 300+ footnotes, read Broom first. If you hate it, no big deal…it’s only 480 pages. But if you like it, you can safely devour IJ.
OMGITWBI! (Oh my god, it’s the world’s
OMGITWBI! (Oh my god, it’s the world’s best invention!) Bed Books have sideways text for easy reading lying in bed. (via cyn-c)
Good new series of ads for Apple; “
Good new series of ads for Apple; “Get a Mac”. I’m pretty sure the chap playing the PC is John Hodgman (author, Daily Show correspondent, This American Life commentator, former literary agent, monthly readings holder, hobo expert). Can anyone confirm? (via df)
Update: According to MacRumors, the Mac is played by Justin Long.
Update #2: Yep, seems to be Hodgman.
The Puzzle Loft
Among the many things New York is famous for is the tiny apartments of its inhabitants. Our first apartment here was about 400 square feet and somehow the people who lived downstairs from us in an apartment with the same footprint fit two people and two pitbull-type dogs into that space. In a recently released book, Apartment Therapy’s Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan reveals that he and his wife live in a 250 square foot apartment in the West Village.
Having such small apartments, city residents want to make the most of the space that they have. In designing a loft apartment for his son, architect Kyu Sung Woo came up with an interesting solution to the space problem…he fit two stories into a one-story apartment. The result is The Interlocking Puzzle Loft, a surprisingly spacious two-bedroom palace crammed into 700 square feet.
As shown and described in this article from Dwell, the key element in the loft is the half-height bedroom above the kitchen and the bedroom’s walkway positioned above the short downstairs hall closet and back kitchen counter, which allows the apartment’s inhabitants to stand up in the bedroom. Pretty genius idea.
Carl Durrenberger noticed some word for word
Carl Durrenberger noticed some word for word similarities between Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson’s unwritten rules (as detailed in this USA Today article about the waiter rule) and those in a book written by a 1944 book called The Unwritten Laws of Engineering. Swanson claims to have written the rules himself during his career at Raytheon.
It’s easier to watch movies than to read books
This list of the 50 best book to film adaptions that I posted yesterday inspired Michael Hanscom to mark which of the movies he’s seen and which of the books he’s read. Here’s my list:
1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. [M] American Psycho
4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. Catch 22
7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. [M] A Clockwork Orange
9. [BM] Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. [M] Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. [M] The Godfather
21. [M] Goldfinger
22. [M] Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [B] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. Jaws
26. The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. [M] LA Confidential
29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. [BM] Lolita
31. [M] Lord of the Flies
32. The Maltese Falcon
33. Oliver Twist
34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. [BM] The Outsiders
37. [BM] Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. [M] The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. [M] Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. [M] The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [M] Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. Watership Down
Note: In the cases of more than one movie adaptation (e.g. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), I marked it as viewed if I’d seen any version of the movie. Also, like Michael, I have no idea why the “top 50” list has 51 items.
A list of the 50 greatest film adaptations
A list of the 50 greatest film adaptations of all time. No Lord of the Rings? Anything else missing?
A contest to find the meanest review.
A contest to find the meanest review. What, no Dale Peck? A review of his got him a smack in the face…
Review of Why? by Charles Tilly, in
Review of Why? by Charles Tilly, in which he examines the four kinds of reasons people offer as explanations for things and under which situations they are used. See also an October 2005 interview with Tilly.
Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is now
Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is now out. Here’s a NY Times piece about Pollan hunting for wild boar that uses material from the book. I loved The Botany of Desire.
Launch party tonight (4/14) at Eyebeam for Yochai
Launch party tonight (4/14) at Eyebeam for Yochai Benkler’s new book, The Wealth of Networks. “His book shows why labor done outside the constraints of free markets and giant corporations can still have a huge impact on the economy and social relations. He argues that a ‘third mode of production’ offers the promise of a more free society, but only if we make the right collective decisions.”
Fascinating article about how it’s becoming impossible
Fascinating article about how it’s becoming impossible to tell 20 year olds and 40 year olds apart and the end of the generation gap. The author never gives a satisfactory answer as to why this shift has occurred though…there has to be an interesting book in here somewhere.
Profile of Daniel Dennett, “Darwinian fundamentalist” and
Profile of Daniel Dennett, “Darwinian fundamentalist” and author of a new book that argues that “religion, chiefly Christianity, is itself a biologically evolved concept, and one that has outlived its usefulness”.
Update: Review of Dennett’s book in the New Yorker.
Norah Vincent disguised herself as a man
Norah Vincent disguised herself as a man for 18 months to see how the other half lived (and write a book about it).
Lots of chatter lately about the “broken
Lots of chatter lately about the “broken windows” theory of why the US crime rate dropped so dramatically in the 80s and 90s. Writing in the Boston Globe, Daniel Brook explores the possible cracks in the theory, while proponents William Bratton & George Kelling defend it from “attacks” from ‘liberals”, “anti-police groups”, and “ivory-tower academics”. Gladwell says broken windows holds up, Dubner disagrees, and Gladwell rebuts.
In his new book, Twelve Books That
In his new book, Twelve Books That Changed the World, Melvyn Bragg discusses, um, there’s no other way to put this, twelve (British) books that changed the world.
Collection of publicly available articles from The
Collection of publicly available articles from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005. Good reading. (thx, robin)
Shaking up tech publishing: “It seems that
Shaking up tech publishing: “It seems that the industry standard [for authors] is something akin to 10% of the profits (which easily take 4-5-6 months to arrive), being forced to write in Word, and finally a production cycle that’s at least a good 3 months from final book to delivery. That’s horrible!” Building a shop “to take $19 from your credit card” and laying out books in InDesign aren’t as easy as he makes it out to be for everyone, but it’s a great overall point.
The Edge has a transcript and an
The Edge has a transcript and an mp3 recording of an event called The Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On. The speakers include Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins.
Top 1000 publications owned by US libraries. The
Top 1000 publications owned by US libraries. The Holy Bible, the 2000 US Census, and Mother Goose top the list. (via o’r)
Beer as in journalism
Glenn Reynolds makes an interesting analogy about journalism and beer making in his new book:
Without formal training and using cheap equipment, almost anyone can do it. The quality may be variable, but the best home-brews are tastier than the stuff you see advertised during the Super Bowl. This is because big brewers, particularly in America, have long aimed to reach the largest market by pushing bland brands that offend no one. The rise of home-brewing, however, has forced them to create “micro-brews” that actually taste of something. In the same way, argues Mr Reynolds, bloggers—individuals who publish their thoughts on the internet—have shaken up the mainstream media (or MSM, in blogger parlance).
What, no “drunk on power” quip? Curiously, the Economist piece fails to mention the name of Reynolds’ book, An Army of Davids, although it appears over in the right sidebar, almost camouflaged as an ad.
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